Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Jon Stewart just proved once again that he's, ironically, one of the most competent and reputable news show hosts in America. He did it by verbally bitch-slapping the so-called serious media during a breakfast with correspondents covering the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

CNN reports:

"Stewart directed most of his ire at the 24-hour cable news networks, which he called 'gerbil wheels,' and said the media at-large had 'abdicated' to what he called the 'slow-witted beast.'

He said the never-ending television news cycle creates a 'false sense of urgency' and forces reporters to 'follow the veins that have been mined,' instead of pursuing serious and in-depth reporting."

And just how on-the-money is Stewart? Watch this video, edited by the people at 23/6, which shows what happens when the lack of any actual news to report makes CNN's staff go, apparently, insane.

10 comments:

At least they go insane, instead of trying to tell the nation how much the house the VP candidate lives in is worth. I still see Neil Cavuto's face unpunched...*sigh* I guess I am going to have to do it myself then.

Presumably at least some of the people who work at CNN are intelligent, hip, and self-aware people who got into journalism to try and inform the public or investigate stuff or...well...do something other than tell viewers that nothing is happening. How do they deal with working at an organization that's gone this far off the rails? Is there no soul-searching going on in response to people consistently pointing out how dreadful the coverage is? Is there nobody screaming "RED ALERT, RED ALERT, we just did a series on whether or not the bigfoot corpse presented by two known bigfoot hoaxers was real or not, AND we now sell t-shirts with inane headlines like 'Skimppy Cheer Skirts Break Dress Code'?"

Is it just that all the upper managers care about profit to the exclusion of anything else including potential future profit, is it that everyone there is stone cold stupid? I'm genuinely flabbergasted that this stuff keeps happening because you'd think with all that money and all the talent someone would step up and try to fix things.

I think the biggest testament to Stewart's wit and intelligence is that any news story about him consists of 80% direct quotes from Stewart himself. This CNN report and that other recent piece in the NYTimes, are nothing but hanging quotes from Stewart with a few of the journalist's words in there for padding.

I've never been in the industry, so I don't really know for a fact -- but I've always had the suspicion that (especially on the 24 hour networks) that the air talent are more or less just talking heads who go where the producers and directors send them -- and when they get a story like this (or dear god, the whole Anna Nicole thing) they are sometimes just hung out to dry while clips play that they are supposed to comment on and conjecture about while waiting for the actual next important fact to be found out by someone else.

Unfortunately, it is too much to hope that Stewart's deeply apt "gerbil wheel" diagnosis might do for the rest of cable news what his Tucker Carlson interview did for Hardball.

I tried to watch the convention last night, but could only stomach the CSPAN feed (with flips to PBS when it wasn't all Shieldsy/Brooksy). Chris, Lou, and the rest of their cohort need to understand that they're now producing segments that are less palatable than watching septuagenarian Hillary delegates shake their groove things to retread recordings of 70s feel-good soul music. That is a dire situation for any who would call themselves "journalists".

excuse me, but we down here in philly are wondering where the obligatory "Mendte's back in the news post" is? i mean, an "improper relationship"? sure, if by "improper" you mean fellow anchors who are 20 years your junior squirm and shudder and generally run away when you proposition them, what with your excessive pancake makeup and orange-sheened hair...his poor (gigantic) wife...

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